An appellate court in Beijing has reduced the penalty that the New Oriental Group, China’s leading test-preparation center, must pay to the Educational Testing Service and the Graduate Management Admission Council for infringement of intellectual-property rights, the state-run China Daily newspaper has reported.
The two American organizations had accused New Oriental of selling pirated copes of copyrighted tests and of hiring people to sit for the examinations for the sole purpose of memorizing the questions, which the company then used as teaching materials in China.
In September 2003, a lower court ordered the group to pay the two American organizations $1.2-million for copyright and trademark infringement. The company appealed that ruling.
In a decision announced in December, the Beijing High People’s Court reduced the damages to $774,000, ruling that New Oriental had not infringed the trademarks for the Graduate Management Admission Test, the Graduate Record Examination, or the Test of English as a Foreign Language. The court said the Chinese company had used the terms GMAT, GRE, and Toefl on its publications only as the names of the tests, and not as business brands.
Zhao Jing, a spokeswoman for New Oriental, said the company would pay the reduced damages. “This is the final decision of the court, and we will respect this ruling,” she said.
Ms. Zhao conceded that New Oriental had violated intellectual-property rights in the past, but she said it has ceased copying materials owned by the Educational Testing Service and the Graduate Management Admission Council.
She also said the company would henceforth legally purchase GRE and GMAT materials in the United States.
She added, however, that New Oriental had already developed its own materials for a test of English as a foreign language and would use those materials in its classes.
Zhou Qiang, a lawyer representing the two American organizations, told China Daily that the ruling also ordered New Oriental to turn over all illegally gained copies of the two groups’ materials. It must also publish a public apology in the Chinese-language Legal Daily. The company has already shut down a Web site with questions from previous tests.
New Oriental, the biggest test-preparation school in China, enrolled 450,000 students in its 10 branches around the country in 2003.
http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 51, Issue 19, Page A35